Posts Tagged ‘high’

November 7, 2012

Post by Nicole Rife

I love visiting our Outreach Educators. Caitlin is at Erie Intermediate today in Ashtabula, OH and has a great group of high school volunteers and parents helping today. Some of the students helped yesterday at Superior Elementary and enjoyed their volunteer time so much that they asked to make a new club. If you look closely, you will see “COSI Club” on a few shirts; they made them last night. How awesome is that? We love our volunteers and love it when they get as excited as us to teach kids. It’s going to be a great day of learning in Ashtabula!

On January 12, 2012, COSI Academy students explored various different aspects of engineering (COSI Academy is COSI’s STEM-career exploration program for high-school students). In the morning I led a zip line activity with the students. Their objective was to create a zip line with four feet of string and various different materials. They were paired in groups and were given forty-five minutes to achieve three goals.

The first was to create a carrier that would transport a regular ping pong ball from point A to point B (four ft) in four seconds. Once the students gathered their materials they could alter them, but could not go back to get more materials if they found out that it did not work out the first time. I timed the students once they implemented their zip line plan.

The second goal was to add or subtract materials in order for the students to get their carrier to land at point B in seven seconds. Many were extremely creative in brainstorming their ideas. Some students used balloons and placed their ping balls inside of them to replace a carrier. Part of this exercise was to demonstrate how an engineer will need to talk through several ideas before putting them into action, trial and error and understanding how to work with limited materials in strict time limitations.

I was impressed by one student that continued to work past the forty-five minutes into lunch! This was on the third goal. Once the students had reached the seven second goal, I told them their final challenge was to recreate the zip line so that the ping pong ball launched out of the carrier. Brandon, an active student in COSI Academy, worked for several minutes into lunch after trying very hard to get his ping ball to launch.

Attached below is the sequence of me timing Brandon and the end when he finally got his ball to launch in seven seconds.